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Review MGM Entertainment / Windtalkers [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Nicolas Cage|Adam Beach|Christian Slater|Peter Stormare
  • John Woo
Release date: 2003-02-10
Run time: 128 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £2.61

Review Windtalkers [2002] / MGM Entertainment:

John Woo's reputation as the world's best action director hits a major breakdown with Windtalkers, an overlong, over-silly, overwritten and overacted entry in the current American craze for war movies that combine extreme patriotism with hordes of Yankee extras getting bloodily cut to pieces until a final uplifting victory. US Marine Nicolas Cage-with a scarred ear and a fed-up look-is given the job of looking after Navajo Adam Beach, whose complex language is the basis of a code being used to fool the Japanese in the Pacific during World War II. His orders are to protect not Beach but the code, (including orders to kill Beach if it looks like capture is imminent) which makes for an uneasy progress from hatred-at-first-sight through growing respect to agonised male bonding. From an interesting historical footnote, Woo and his collaborators spin out an unlikely and repetitive platoon story, with an all-cliché bunch of grunts spitting out hardboiled dialogue between the noise and violence. The Woo touch is evident; from the astonishing pullback from a butterfly over bloodied waters to the thick of hand-to-hand fighting, but too many of the battle scenes are just more explosions-and-body-parts along the same lines of Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down. On the DVD: Windtalkers contains an 11-minute TV filler making-of featurette; footage of the entire cast (except Cage) romping through the research process at Actors' Bootcamp; plus on-set diaries, i. e. , B-roll footage of the crew working on four big action scenes. Of the two commentary tracks, the first offers a lot of mutual stroking with the occasional insight from Cage and Slater, the other offers Navajo actor Roger Willie and real-life codetalker/technical advisor Albert Smith. The language options, for soundtrack and subtitles, are English and (oddly) Czech. [+]
-Kim Newman.

Review Warner Home Video / The Stalking Moon [1968] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Richard Bull
  • Noland Clay
  • Lou Frizzell
  • Lonny Chapman
  • Robert Mulligan
  • Henry Beckman
Release date: 2008-08-26
Run time: 109 min.
Creator: Fred Karlin
Price: £3.90

Review The Stalking Moon [1968] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Doctor Who - The Mind Robber [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • David Maloney
  • Patrick Troughton
  • Frazer Hines
  • Wendy Padbury
Release date: 2005-03-07
Run time: 99 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.85

Review Doctor Who - The Mind Robber [1968] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / G.I. Blues [1960]
Actors & Directors
  • Norman Taurog
  • James Douglas
  • Elvis Presley
  • Robert Ivers
  • Juliet Prowse
  • Letícia Román
Release date: 2002-03-18
Run time: 99 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.64

Review G.I. Blues [1960] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

After Elvis Presley got out of the army in 1960, he was instantly ushered into G. I. Blues, a Paramount movie about an Oklahoma singer who (surprise) gets out of the army and wants to open a club. Making a potentially lucrative bet that he can seduce a cabaret singer (Juliet Prowse), Elvis instead falls in love. Leaving behind his rockabilly roots for a slicker image better suited to early 60s pop, the Elvis of this movie is the one who made almost 30 more just like it. The songs include "G. I. Blues", "It's Not Good Enough for You," "Tonight Is So Right for Love" and "Wooden Heart". It's directed by Norman Taurog, a studio veteran who made his first film in 1928 and worked many times with Presley. -Tom Keogh.

Review Opus Arte / Adam - Giselle (Cojocaru, Royal Ballet, Gruzin) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Alina Cojocaru
  • Johan Kobborg
  • Marianela Nuñez
  • Marius Petipa (Choreographer);Boris Gruzin (Conductor)
  • Martin Harvey
Release date: 2008-09-01
Run time: 112 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £14.48

Review Adam - Giselle (Cojocaru, Royal Ballet, Gruzin) (NTSC) / Opus Arte:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Hustler [1961]
Actors & Directors
  • Piper Laurie
  • George C. Scott
  • Robert Rossen
  • Jackie Gleason
  • Paul Newman
  • Myron McCormick
Release date: 2002-08-19
Run time: 129 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £0.99

Review The Hustler [1961] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Agony And The Ecstasy [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Diane Cilento
  • Alberto Lupo
  • Charlton Heston
  • Carol Reed
  • Harry Andrews
  • Rex Harrison
Release date: 2007-03-26
Run time: 130 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.69

Review The Agony And The Ecstasy [1965] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Midnight Lace [1960]
Actors & Directors
  • Myrna Loy
  • David Miller
  • Herbert Marshall
  • Doris Day
  • Roddy McDowall
  • Rex Harrison
Release date: 2006-05-08
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.31

Review Midnight Lace [1960] / Universal Pictures UK:


Review ITV DVD / Great Expectations [Blu-ray] [1946]
Actors & Directors
  • O. B. Clarence
  • John Mills
  • Martita Hunt
  • David Lean
  • Ivor Barnard
  • Torin Thatcher
Release date: 2008-06-23
Run time: 113 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £13.44

Review Great Expectations [Blu-ray] [1946] / ITV DVD:


Review MGM Entertainment / Women In Love [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • Jennie Linden
  • Alan Bates
  • Ken Russell
  • Glenda Jackson
  • Oliver Reed
  • Eleanor Bron
Release date: 2004-08-02
Run time: 125 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.98

Review Women In Love [1969] / MGM Entertainment:

Before director Ken Russell's name became synonymous with cinematic extravagance and overkill, he actually directed what is one of the most passionate and involving adaptations of DH Lawrence in recent memory. Oliver Reed and Alan Bates star as friends who fall in love with a pair of sisters (Jennie Linden and Glenda Jackson, who won an Oscar for the role). But the relationships take markedly different directions, as Russell explores the nature of commitment and love. Bates and Linden learn to give themselves to each other; the more withdrawn Reed cannot, finally, connect with the demanding and challenging Jackson. Shot with great sensuality, Women in Love was surprisingly frank for its period (1970) and includes one of the most charged scenes in movie history: Bates and Reed as manly men, wrestling nude by firelight. -Marshall Fine.

Review Snapper Music / Jazz On A Summer's Day [1958] (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Sal Salvador
  • Henry Grimes
  • Bert Stern
  • Aram Avakian
  • Sonny Stitt
  • Thelonious Monk
  • Jimmy Giuffre
Release date: 2001-09-10
Run time: 85 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £8.75

Review Jazz On A Summer's Day [1958] (NTSC) / Snapper Music:

The 1959 Newport Jazz Festival was a true musical watershed, as Jazz on a Summer's Day reveals. This 75-minute film captures an event poised on the cusp of a new era, as the cool jazz of Jimmy Guiffre and the effortless scat of Anita O'Day intermingle with the hard bop of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and the smouldering fusion overtones of the Chico Hamilton Quintet. There's a crisp contribution from Chuck Berry, a typically feel-good set from Louis Armstrong-including a hilarious duo with Jack Teagarden-and, as evening shades into night, a heartfelt performance from Mahalia Jackson, closing with a melting rendition of "The Lord's Prayer". Bert Stern has assembled all these and more into a satisfying sequence, complete with footage of an enthusiastic and informal audience. Shots of the yachting line-up from the America's Cup round out a blissful and what now seems blissfully naïve occasion. On the DVD: Colour picture quality has worn well, whereas sound has deteriorated notably at times: Thelonius Monk's quarter-tones could easily be a semitone flat! Even so, it's worth putting up with this to enjoy a tour through music-making whose relaxed spontaneity would be impossible to emulate today. -Richard Whitehouse.

Review MGM Entertainment / A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Crawford
  • Buster Keaton
  • Richard Lester
  • Phil Silvers
  • Zero Mostel
  • Jack Gilford
Release date: 2004-01-12
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.24

Review A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum [1966] / MGM Entertainment:

The words of the opening song pretty much describe the menu in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum-"Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone: a comedy tonight!"-a frantic adaptation of the stage musical by Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove. The wild story, based on the Latin comedies of Plautus and set in ancient Rome, follows a slave named Pseudolus (Zero Mostel, snorting and gibbering) as he tries to extricate himself from an increasingly farcical situation; Mostel and a bevy of inspired clowns, including Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford and Buster Keaton, keep the slapstick and the patter perking. The cast also includes the young Michael Crawford as a love-struck innocent. This project landed in the lap of Richard Lester, then one of the hottest directors in the world after his success with the Beatles' films. Lester telescoped the material through his own joke-a-second sensibility, and also ripped out some of the songs from Stephen Sondheim's Broadway score. The result is very close to the vaudeville spirit suggested by the title-though anyone with a low tolerance for Zero Mostel's overbearing buffoonery may be in trouble. Oddly enough, amid all the frenzy, Lester creates a grungy, earthy Rome that seems closer to the real thing than countless respectable historical films on the subject. Frankie Howerd, who played Pseudolus on the London stage, kept the tradition going with his Up Pompeii TV series. -Robert Horton.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / His Girl Friday [1940]
Actors & Directors
  • Ralph Bellamy
  • Howard Hawks
  • Porter Hall
  • Rosalind Russell
  • Cary Grant
  • Gene Lockhart
Release date: 2002-12-09
Run time: 88 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.99

Review His Girl Friday [1940] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

His Girl Friday is one of the five greatest dialogue comedies ever made. Howard Hawks had his cast play it at breakneck speed, and audiences hyperventilate trying to finish with one laugh so they can do justice to the four that have accumulated in the meantime. Rosalind Russell, not Hawks' first choice to play Hildy Johnson-the ace newsperson whom demonic editor Walter Burns is trying to keep from quitting and getting married-is triumphant in the part, holding her own as "one of the guys" and creating an enduring feminist icon. Cary Grant's Walter Burns is a force of nature, giving a performance of such concentrated frenzy and diamond brilliance that you owe it to yourself to devote at least one viewing of the movie to watching him alone. But then you have to go back (lucky you) and watch it again for the sake of the press-room gang-Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall, Cliff Edwards, Regis Toomey, Frank Jenks, and others-the kind of ensemble work that gets character actors onto Parnassus. -Richard T Jameson, Amazon. com.

Review Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd. / James Bond - Thunderball (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Adolfo Celi
  • Sean Connery
  • Claudine Auger
  • Bernard Lee
  • Terence Young
  • Lois Maxwell
Release date: 2006-07-17
Run time: 125 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £3.78

Review James Bond - Thunderball (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1965] / Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd.:


Review Second Sight Films Ltd. / Orson Welles' Macbeth [1948]
Actors & Directors
  • Orson Welles
  • Lionel Braham
  • Robert Coote
  • William Alland
  • Keene Curtis
  • Orson Welles
Release date: 2003-08-25
Run time: 103 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.91

Review Orson Welles' Macbeth [1948] / Second Sight Films Ltd.:

Orson Welles' Macbeth is an expressionist masterpiece about a doomed man of ordinary ambition who believes an evil prophecy that he will become King. The shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies, Welles long considered Macbeth to be the most filmable of the Bard's work. Produced on a slim budget over a mere 32 days, the results are consistently impressive. As depicted by Welles, the title character is not a warrior king or conscience-stricken, poetic soul on a par with Hamlet; rather, he is revealed to be a facile, superstitious man consigned to fate even as the character does not trust to fate. For her part, Lady Macbeth (Jeanette Nolan) is merely obsessed with the unimpeded exercise of her will to power, viewing her husband's life as a tale told by an idiot (she is particularly effective during the "out, damned spot" scene from Act V). Welles has also created some new scenes here, conflating several characters into a "Holy Father" (Alan Napier) while eliciting strong supporting turns from actors such as Dan O'Herlihy (Macduff) and Roddy McDowall (Malcolm). All of this unfolds within a highly disordered state in which nature itself is on the rant ("Fair is foul and foul is fair"). Though the technically poor soundtrack and the occasional indecipherable Scottish brogue make the film seem a trifle compromised at times, each moment feels preternaturally alive. There is an almost Brechtian quality here, with Welles giving us splendid pieces then leaving it to us to fit them into a theatrically coherent puzzle. Refusing to believe that Birnham Wood could ever travel to Dunsinane, Macbeth is finally exposed as a man of insufficient character. [+]
As such, some might suggest that this Macbeth is more accurately described as the story of how Malcolm became King. -Kevin Mulhall.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / 3:10 To Yuma [1957]
Actors & Directors
  • Van Heflin
  • Felicia Farr
  • Glenn Ford
  • Henry Jones
  • Delmer Daves
  • Leora Dana
Release date: 2002-04-22
Run time: 88 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.00

Review 3:10 To Yuma [1957] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

3:10 to Yuma is a tight, taut Western in the High Noon tradition. Struggling rancher and family man Van Heflin sneaks captured outlaw Glenn Ford out from under the eyes of his gang and nervously awaits the prison train. Adapted from an Elmore Leonard story, this tense thriller is boiled down to its essential elements: a charming and cunning criminal, an initially reluctant hero whose courage and resolution hardens along the way and a waiting game that pits them in a battle of wills and wits. Glenn Ford practically steals the film in one of his best performances ever: calm, cool and confident, he's a ruthless killer with polite manners and an honourable streak. Director Delmer Daves (Broken Arrow) sets it all in a harsh, parched frontier of empty landscapes, deserted towns and dust, creating a brittle quiet that threatens to snap into violence at any moment. -Sean Axmaker, Amazon. com.

Review ITV DVD / Jamaica Inn [1939]
Actors & Directors
  • Charles Laughton
  • Alfred Hitchcock
  • Maureen O'Hara
  • Leslie Banks
  • Emlyn Williams
  • Robert Newton
Release date: 2003-07-07
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.98

Review Jamaica Inn [1939] / ITV DVD:

It's generally acknowledged that the Master of Suspense disliked costume dramas and Jamaica Inn-a rip-roaring melodrama drawn from a Daphne du Maurier pot-boiler, set in 1820s Cornwall-is about as costumed as they come. So what was he doing directing it? Killing time, essentially. In 1939 Hitchcock was due to leave Britain for Hollywood, but delays Stateside left him with time on his hands. Never one to sit idle, he agreed to make one picture for Mayflower Productions, a new outfit formed by actor Charles Laughton and émigré German producer Erich Pommer. An innocent young orphan (the 19-year-old Maureen O'Hara in her first starring role) arrives at her uncle's remote Cornish inn to find it a den of reprobates given to smuggling, wrecking and gross overacting. They're all out-hammed, though, by Laughton at his most corseted and outrageously self-indulgent as the local squire to whom Maureen runs for help. Since his star was also the co-producer, Hitch couldn't do much with the temperamental actor. He contented himself with adding a few characteristic touches-including a spot of bondage (always a Hitchcock favourite), and the chief villain's final spectacular plunge from a high place-and slyly sending up the melodramatic absurdities of the plot. Jamaica Inn hardly stands high in the Master's canon, but it trundles along divertingly enough. Hitchcock fanatics will have fun comparing it with his two subsequent-and far more accomplished-Du Maurier adaptations, Rebecca and The Birds. [+]
-Philip Kemp.

Review MGM Entertainment / Never On Sunday [1960]
Actors & Directors
  • Jules Dassin
  • Titos Vandis
  • Jules Dassin
  • Melina Mercouri
  • Georges Foundas
Release date: 2005-07-11
Run time: 97 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.69

Review Never On Sunday [1960] / MGM Entertainment:


Review Warner Home Video / Musical Classics 3-Disc Set: Calamity Jane, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and My Fair Lady [1953]
Actors & Directors
  • Doris Day
  • Rex Harrison
  • Audrey Hepburn
  • George Cukor
  • David Butler
  • Gladys Cooper
  • Stanley Donen
  • Wilfrid Hyde White
Release date: 2007-10-08
Run time: 211 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £11.89

Review Musical Classics 3-Disc Set: Calamity Jane, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and My Fair Lady [1953] / Warner Home Video:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Rear Window [1954]
Actors & Directors
  • Alfred Hitchcock
  • Wendell Corey
  • Georgine Darcy
  • Thelma Ritter
  • Frank Cady
  • Grace Kelly
Release date: 2007-06-04
Run time: 112 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.54

Review Rear Window [1954] / Universal Pictures UK:

Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder. Photographer L. B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom, underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears, Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she's really left town, as Thorwald insists, or been murdered. Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto convincingly argues that the crime at the center of this mystery is the MacGuffin-a mere pretext-in a film that's more interested in the implications of Jeff's sentinel perspective. We actually learn more about the lives of the other neighbors (given generic names by Jeff, even as he's drawn into their lives) he, and we, watch undetected than we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeff's evident fear of intimacy and commitment with the elegant, adoring Lisa provides the other vital thread to the script, one woven not only into the couple's own relationship, but reflected and even commented upon through the various neighbours' lives. [+]
At minimum, Hitchcock's skill at making us accomplices to Jeff's spying, coupled with an ingenious escalation of suspense as the teasingly vague evidence coalesces into ominous proof, deliver a superb thriller spiked with droll humour, right up to its nail-biting, nightmarish climax. At deeper levels, however, Rear Window plumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional honesty, while offering further proof (were any needed) of the director's brilliance as a visual storyteller. -Sam Sutherland.

Browse Classics:

Models & Brands:
Windtalkers [2002], The Stalking Moon [1968] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Doctor Who - The Mind Robber [1968], G.I. Blues [1960], Adam - Giselle (Cojocaru, Royal Ballet, Gruzin) (NTSC), The Hustler [1961], The Agony And The Ecstasy [1965], Midnight Lace [1960], Great Expectations [Blu-ray] [1946], Women In Love [1969], Jazz On A Summer's Day [1958] (NTSC), A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum [1966], His Girl Friday [1940], James Bond - Thunderball (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1965], Orson Welles' Macbeth [1948], 3:10 To Yuma [1957], Jamaica Inn [1939], Never On Sunday [1960], Musical Classics 3-Disc Set: Calamity Jane, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and My Fair Lady [1953], Rear Window [1954]

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